[Sigia-l] IA research?

[Dmitry Nekrasovski]

> HCI, human factors, anthropology, ethnography and so on are coming to and
> perhaps usurping AI because the problem spaces we investigate lead us to
> questions that involve categorisation (AI) issues. 

As a graduate student in HCI currently fascinated with (and possibly
soon to be looking for work in) IA, I'd like to dispute this statement
insofar as it applies to HCI. I don't think the problem is that HCI is
usurping IA, more that HCI is (mostly) unaware of IA:

- The most recent CHI conference had six entries containing IA as a
keyword, but most of them came from the design expo, a
practitioner-oriented track. None were full-length research papers.
- Search the CHI archive for "findability", and you will get no
results that are even remotely related to IA.
- Ask your average HCI researcher (well, at least my colleagues :)) if
they are familiar with IA, and you're likely to get either a blank
stare or a response to the effect of "isn't that something web
developers do?"

With respect to the original post, I definitely agree with the
statement "there is a lack of deep IA research" within the research
fields I am familiar with. Some of the reasons for this have already
been pointed out: the fact that the vast majority of IA's are
practitioners who have no time or inclination for research, the fact
that IA has no research forum of its own. I would also add to these a
general lack of awareness in the research community of what IA is,
what value it brings, and what interesting research problems can be
found within it.

Dmitry

-- 
Dmitry Nekrasovski
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~dmitry